Broad_market_efficiency.page

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title: Broad market efficiency
format: markdown
categories: non-profit-analogs
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The idea of "broad market efficiency" has been introduced in [a post](http://blog.givewell.org/2013/05/02/broad-market-efficiency/) by GiveWell's Holden Karnofsky.

Some other pieces that discuss broad market efficiency in the non-profit world:

- "[It's harder to favor a specific cause in more efficient charitable markets](http://reflectivedisequilibrium.blogspot.com/2014/01/its-harder-to-favor-specific-cause-in.html)"  by Carl Shulman
- A section on market efficiency in Brian Tomasik's "[Why Charities Don't Differ Astronomically in Cost-Effectiveness](http://reducing-suffering.org/why-charities-dont-differ-astronomically-in-cost-effectiveness/#Engineering_vs_market_efficiency)"

See also [this comment](http://lesswrong.com/lw/i7p/how_does_miri_know_it_has_a_medium_probability_of/9jps) by Luke Muehlhauser, which argues that more research is important, but which also makes the claim that the best causes for existential risk tend to get funded:

> Getting high-quality evidence about which x-risk mitigation efforts are
> worthwhile requires lots of work, but one thing we've learned in the
> past decade is that causes with high-quality evidence for their
> effectiveness tend to get funded, and this trend is probably increasing.
> The sooner we do enough learning to have high-quality evidence for the
> goodness of particular x-risk mitigation efforts, the sooner large
> funders will fund those efforts. Or, as [Christiano
> writes](http://rationalaltruist.com/2013/06/10/the-best-reason-to-give-later/):
> 
> > To me it currently looks like the value of getting information faster
> > is significantly higher than the value of money, and on the current
> > margin I think most of these learning activities are underfunded.

# External links

- "[How Efficient is the Charitable Market?](http://lesswrong.com/lw/ie7/how_efficient_is_the_charitable_market/)" by Luke Muehlhauser